The 41-year-old opponent, released during a prisoner exchange between Moscow and the West last August, was placed on the “wanted persons” list. The authorities did not explain the reasons for this decision.
“Wanted according to an article of the penal code”, we can read on the site, with a photograph of Ilia Iachine, her name as well as her date and place of birth. The authorities did not specify the reason for this wanted notice. Ilia Yashin, a former Moscow municipal deputy, is also designated “foreign agent”, a term accompanied by heavy administrative constraints and generally applied to opponents of President Vladimir Putin.
An active activist in the liberal opposition in Russia since the 2000s, Ilia Iachine was sentenced at the end of 2022 to eight and a half years in prison for having denounced “the killing of civilians” in the Ukrainian town of Bucha during the Russian assault on that country. A member of the Moscow municipal parliament at the time of his arrest, Ilia Iachine fought alongside opponents Alexeï Navalny, who died in detention in February 2024, and Boris Nemtsov, assassinated in 2015.
Zelensky in the wanted list
The forty-year-old was finally released on August 1 during a historic prisoner exchange between Russia and the West, along with other Russian opponents and American journalist Evan Gershkovich. Ilia Yashin, who had previously affirmed that he did not wish to leave Russia, had estimated the day after his release that this type of exchange “instigates Putin to take more hostages”.
“I understood my imprisonment not only as a fight against the war but also as a fight for my right to live in my country, to pursue an independent policy there”he said during a press conference in Germany. He has since been involved in the Russian opposition movement in exile, and for example took part in a demonstration against the conflict in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin in Berlin in November. The list of people wanted by Russia is very extensive and includes Russian and foreign personalities, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
